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UKCrimeStats goes down because of . . . crime !

It’s quite an irony that all phone and internet lines near our datacentre went down for a few days from last Friday mid-afternoon until this morning because of the theft of 1,000 pairs of cable !

So we had no way of getting our website UKCrimeStats back online again which is incredibly annoying in the early days of any website. And my initial anger with BT turned to some sympathy when I found out why this had happened.

Cable theft is a growing problem and the root cause it would seem – other than dishonesty – has to be the pretty spectacular recovery of copper prices since 2008, now near recent highs.

For all that, I find it quite incredible that this actually happened in broad daylight of the time of my cut-off was anything to go by. Cable theft is apparently costing the UK £770m a year – but that doesn’t include the lost time and opportunities to those dependent on broadband and telecom services.